Currently, it is more important for businesses to market themselves on the internet than it is to market through sign boards and newspapers. Businesses that understood the importance of internet presence and took early actions are among some of the biggest businesses of the world today. Even the businesses, whose products could never have any entertainment element associated to them, made a great name using the power of internet – social media to be more specific. They tried unique ideas rather than relying on sales pitches, they created likeable internet images.
Internet has many different platforms that allow businesses to be visible. How well you use these platforms decides your overall presence in the digital world. While social media gets the highest numbers in giving any business real presence in the cyber world, there are many other factors that play an essential role in making your presence noteworthy. It’s not the different platforms that you can use for marketing your business and giving your business a prominent presence on the internet, but the tools working behind them. Here is a list of some important factors to work on for having a reputable presence on the internet.
The Web Host
When you want to have a website on the internet, the first thing you need is a web host. This web host will host your website on its server for it to be available to the world at all times. Now, you might want to look for cheap web hosting in the beginning but you have to look at other things too. Make sure the web host is known for the type of web hosting that you want. There is shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, virtual private server, cloud web hosting etc. You will most definitely have to go for shared web hosting in the beginning.
Make sure your web host is known for shared web hosting. Secondly, have a look at the downtime and customer support. Do see how easy it would be for you to manage your website content through this host and if the website CMS you are using will be easily installable on your web host. Your web host should also be easily scalable so when you need to get to a better web hosting solution, you don’t necessarily have to switch to another website hosting provider.
The Social Media Tools
Another important thing that you need to get acquainted with is a set of social media tools. These are the tools designed specifically for businesses to have a good presence on social media. They work in many different ways. Some of these tools are designed to make your social interaction easier. They do this by giving you access to almost every social networking account you might have through one platform. With this dashboard-like interface you can see an overview of all your social networking accounts and send posts and notifications to all of them simultaneously.
In a similar fashion, there are many other tools that facilitate your marketing on social networks. With some, you can schedule your posts to be posted at particular times. You can also know when someone mentions your brand’s name in their comments. Some tools will allow you to create polls and surveys that you can put forth for your customers, fans and followers to get their opinions on certain things. These prove to be great ways not only for you to know the voice of the people but also become prominent for them as they remember you through these polls.
SERP Rankings
SERP stands for search engine result pages. When you talk about SERP rankings, you are referring to the rank your website appears at when someone searches for a particular keyword on the search engine. Mainly, SERP rankings refer to the rankings on Google, since Google is the biggest search engine giant on the internet. Your SERP rankings help you greatly in knowing a lot of stuff about your presence on the internet. First, it shows you what keywords you need to work on in order to get your business in the top results. Second, it informs you about the rankings for the same keywords of your competitors.
SERP ranking tools are greatly popular among SEOs. Using these tools, these companies produce reports that give you a great insight into what keywords are most potential for your business. Rather than working on all the keywords you think are relevant to your business, you should be working on the ones that bring the most traffic on your website. These tools even let you add comments on various positions of your website. The reports are a great way to know what you might have done wrong to cause your website to go down for instance.
Your Network
In order to have a positive presence on the internet, you need to have a network of reputable websites. This can be done in many different ways. The most important of all is how you create your backlinks. There was a time when websites were going crazy with the number of backlinks coming from the same clients. They would ask other websites to host content in which they will create multiple backlinks to their websites. This practice was put to an end when Google specifically started taking head shots at websites with too many back links.
Google’s idea was to urge websites to put more focus on quality rather than quantity. You need to do the same. You have to create a network of reputable websites and have the links being directed from them to your website. Don’t focus too much on quantity. It does not matter if you only have a few hundred backlinks coming to your website. Just make sure they are coming from reputable sources i.e. websites that have good rankings and repute in the eyes of Google. If there are any backlinks you think could put you in trouble, get rid of them through disavow tool.
